


seal the sky closed with the last of the light

by Solanaceae



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Yeah. That., u know that one siken quote abt the dragon and the hero
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-15
Updated: 2020-04-15
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:26:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23670766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Solanaceae/pseuds/Solanaceae
Summary: The least he can do is be the poisonous thing he was made to be. Play the part that lets them be the heroes. Destroy everything that they cannot bear to and be the last monster that they can kill without regret.
Comments: 7
Kudos: 38





	seal the sky closed with the last of the light

**Author's Note:**

> _i played puppetmaster with all your sightless_   
>  _tides, so you can blame me if that’ll leave you_   
>  _untouched by the weight of this world’s ending_
> 
> _and i’ll seal the sky closed with the last of the light._
> 
> — [quinn lui](https://flowercryptid.tumblr.com/post/615227019841732608/your-hair-is-riverstone-smooth-in-my-hands-every)

In his first life, Essek Thelyss stands at a precipice and watches the world burn.

***

He trains himself from a young age to never  _ want _ . 

The Umavi is not a cruel mother, but nor is she kind; not until it becomes clear that Essek is only himself. He cannot fault her for it. Warmth offered to someone who might have been born a rival, or an unintended slight given to a child with a soul older than your own—these are the dangers of consecution. In the highest dens, parents tread lightly around their children, waiting for the day they hear someone else’s voice coming from their not-child.

Verin wants to be consecuted, wants so very badly to prove he is worthy. Essek knows that to be seen desiring something is a luxury that his first-life youth has placed forever out of his reach. 

He cannot strive for anything higher; he must already  _ be _ there.

It makes all of it feel a little inevitable: of  _ course  _ he would take the sacred relic he’s never been allowed to touch for too long and hand it to the enemy. Of course he would let the ensuing war spill out over the continent, the blood of innocent thousands not even his price to pay for the knowledge he needs.

The story—ending and all—was written before he even took up the pen. 

The story does not account for  _ them _ .

He’s ankle-deep in warm water, lights glowing in the branches above him, when he realizes just how much of a mistake he has made. These people, these heroes of the Dynasty, defeaters of gods, chaotic whirlwinds incarnate, they have wound their roots inextricably into him, trapping him as surely as their tree has pushed itself between the stones of their house.

Or—no. 

The Mighty Nein opened the door to their home, and Essek walked in on his own when the music and the light that streamed out touched something in him like tinder. There’s a low, sweet warmth under his skin that has nothing to do with the wine. He can’t put a name to it, can’t call it what he knows it is. 

He can’t want this.

(He can’t help it.)

***

As a child of Den Thelyss and Shadowhand of the Bright Queen, Essek knows well to keep his doubts voiceless. He smoothes them away from his face when the sky is opened over Rosohna and the scalding light pours in. Drow step into the streets, blinking and shuddering in the sun. 

They let the light burn them as if it means something.

In his more cynical moments, he wonders why the Luxon would bless a race of dark elves with a light they cannot even look at for long. And more than that, why these same drow would willingly reach for something that they know will only hurt them the closer they get. Essek knows he is beyond such sentiment. He stands in the sunlight for exactly as long as he is expected to and considers it nothing more than a gesture he makes to keep his position.

Then. He teleports the Mighty Nein to icy mountains, into noonday forests, and the sting of the sun on his skin hurts the same but does not bother him as much as it used to. When he realizes this, he picks the thought apart obsessively, like tugging at a loose thread in his robe.  _ Why? _

Perhaps—as much as it galls him to admit, even to himself—there are some things that he can endure the light for. Companionship. Friendship. 

Essek takes them to a beach. Jester paints him a parasol to shelter him. The realization breaks over him like the unfamiliar waves at his feet, and he thinks,  _ oh. _

They are not the thing he endures the light for.

They  _ are _ the light.

***

Then the salt-shore of Nicodranas, the unraveling of the lie, and the worst part is not the anger he expects or the condemnation he deserves. The worst part is the kindness. 

“Find your better self,” Caleb says, the light in his eyes a desperate mirror, and Essek swallows back the plea rising in his throat, the sudden, impossible need. The air is close and warm, Caleb’s hands like fire on his cheeks.

Caleb  _ understands _ . Essek can see it in the way his entire body is strung tight like silver wire, and Essek feels it all wrapping around him, constricting. Making it impossible to breathe.

_ The difference between you and I—it is thinner than a razor.  _

Understanding someone is, in itself, a form of murder.

***

They look into the dark truth of him and still offer him kinship truer than blood or memory.

He reaches for them.

***

The truth comes out, of course.

Essek will never be certain of the source of his betrayal—Ludinus, perhaps, slipping information into carefully chosen ears, or a Dynasty spy in the wrong place at the right time, or simply his own clumsiness. Either way, the Aurora Watch guards sent to detain him expect him to come quietly in the face of their overwhelming physical strength.

He wraps gravity around their bones and sunders them before they can even scream. 

Out of an abundance of caution, he’s kept nothing essential in his house, so he does not hesitate to leave it a ruined, sunken wreck of twisted stone and bodies. He tears his old life apart with methodical precision, brick by brick.

After, he arrows up into the eternal midnight. Rosohna spreads below him, then disappears. He breaks through the darkness into brilliant sun. The light burns, his vision blurring with it, and he tastes salt and blood and laughter on his tongue, unexpected in its brightness.

***

“You look like shit,” Beauregard says when he finds them, the sharpness of her words not quite enough to disguise the concern in her tone. Essek adjusts his robes to cover where his would-be captors had managed to slip a blade through to flesh and nods.

“I am sorry if I am inconveniencing you. Is this a bad time?”

“Why are you here?” Fjord asks.

“It seems I am left with few harbors that will welcome me,” he says, trying to keep his voice light. He isn’t sure he manages it.

“Well,” Yasha says after a long pause. “You’re here now.”

“Get down here,” Nott—no, Veth—says, tugging the hem of his robe. “Let Jester fix you up.”

***

Sometimes, under the shelter of the dome or around a low-burning campfire, he almost forgets. Someone tells a joke, or says something ridiculous, and Essek’s laughter blends indistinguishably with everyone else’s. The warmth and closeness of the space is more comfortable than claustrophobic. He sleeps curled against the side of the dome, but always ends up with someone’s limb thrown carelessly over his body like an unconscious gesture of trust. 

It’s an easy, thoughtless sort of love.

It isn’t his.

Caduceus wipes blood from Essek’s skin after a particularly rough battle and says, in the slow, gentle way he has, “You are a good addition to this family, you know that?”

“I am lucky,” Essek says, and it is only the years spent keeping his composure in the cold halls of the Lucid Bastion that allow him to keep his voice even, to not fracture around the words he cannot say. “To have friends like you.”

***

_ I am one of the murderers you seek to punish, _ he thinks, watching Yasha withdraw a blade from the limp body of Ludinus Da’leth.

_ You should hate me _ , he thinks as Caleb’s flames take Trent Ikithon’s arrow-riddled outline, swallowing his screams, leaving an imprint of fire burned into Essek’s vision when he blinks.

Vess DeRogna crumples under Beauregard’s fists, and Essek thinks  _ you already do _ , regret bitter on his tongue, _ you already do. _

_ But not enough. _

***

He asks them what they want to do, and they give him unsurprising answers. 

_ Stop the Assembly.  _

_ Punish the people who hurt us. _

_ Keep them from hurting more people.  _

Under all the words, one truth. They want to change the world, but not burn it down in the process. On some level, they understand how things grow after wildfire—they themselves are mostly ash-grown things, talented at resurrection. But the scale of this escapes them. They see the corrupt systems rooted deep in the governments of both sides, of  _ all  _ sides, and think that they can cut the cancer out if they are only precise enough. 

But some roots are so deep that tearing them free means shattering the bedrock they have attached themselves to.

(He should know.)

They bring growth where they go, and he’s only ever carried dusk under his tongue. There is nothing he can do to escape his punishment, but he can make it mean something. He can give them ashes. Soil to plant their trees in. 

Not redemption, but atonement.

***

Despite it all, his heart is weak, and he delays. Essek lets the Mighty Nein drag him from continent to continent, moving between threads in ways that should not add up to a whole tapestry, but do. 

He waits for as long as he can. 

And then: Rosohna in flames, momentarily bright as the sky above its shadow-shield. Holes twisted into the fabric of space, swallowing entire buildings in Rexxentrum. Essek makes sure they see his carefully crafted betrayal written in smoke and ruin across the skies of Wildemount.

“Why?” Jester pleads when they catch up to him. Essek cannot tell her.

( _ You show me a kindness, and I…  _ )

They try to stop him. They throw spells at him, surround him, try to appeal to his better nature. Beauregard strikes him across the face, alight with righteous fury, but Essek pushes through the way his blood wants to freeze him in place. He cannot stay. 

He has work to do.

***

_ You were not born with venom in your veins. _

No, but he has learned his lessons so well. The least he can do is be the poisonous thing he was made to be. Play the part that lets them be the heroes. Destroy everything that they cannot bear to and be the last monster that they can kill without regret. 

***

They chase him and he dances ahead, seeking corruption to tear it apart. He is blood-drenched, finally, hands stained red with the war he birthed but never saw. No cleansing flame, just the suffocating, lightless gravity that swallows lives like a starving beast.

(He was never meant for the fire.) 

Exhaustion creeps up on him, leaves him ragged at the edges. Days and weeks and months blur together. He makes mistakes, miscalculations, and each stumble allows them to catch up a little more.

The conclusion of their story tumbles closer, inevitable as dawn.

***

In his final life, Essek stands at a precipice and watches his family return to him.

Even at the last, he gives them his best lie—deception has always been a talent of his, after all. And it is, even with his skill, a difficult battle. They have become so powerful, so  _ strong, _ and the electric feeling that sparks in him now is easy to name. 

He’s proud of them. 

They batter away his defenses, rip the breath from his lungs and the ground from beneath him. Ice shards tear the air apart, and he spits blood into the approaching inferno. Essek sees it in their eyes: there will be no mercy offered this time. 

Good. 

Daylight breaks—it always does. Breaks him open, leaves him weakened. Roots writhe from the ground, catch and slam him into the stone. They surround him. The puddled blood and melted ice under his body is a tree-lit Rosohna night, wine and laughter on his tongue.

It’s Caleb (of course it is) who bends over him, presses a finger to Essek’s forehead, his touch warm like a pearl in the sun. 

Then the fire, erasing everything else: regret, memory, need. 

Essek smiles and reaches for the light.


End file.
